


Tourniquet

by love_killed_the_superstar



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, also implied reigisa i gueSS?? i mean, based after episode 5 because it wrecked me, nagiharu if you squint i guess haha, nagisa sits on the porch swing outside his house and cries. and haru just happens to be there.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2067138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_killed_the_superstar/pseuds/love_killed_the_superstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know that you think saying these words will make me believe them, Haru-chan. I know that tomorrow we can laugh and joke because I have more time to make things okay, and tomorrow I'll smile and be merry and will be full of energy. But in the end, that's still because of you all, isn't it?”<br/>Nagisa shook all over, but forced the same smile he always did, knuckles white.<br/>“That's okay, isn't it? I'll smile and joke while you are all here. And then when you leave, I'll give into the cycle and allow it to repeat. Because I can't stand up for myself, Haru-chan. I can't do anything by myself.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tourniquet

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble which ended up being too long for a drabble, at 5am when I was a mess and had just finished watching Free!  
> my nagisa-loving heart was never ready

Nagisa's life wasn't perfect. He could laugh and brush off the subject and lie his ass off that his life was perfect, but it was terribly flawed, and he knew it better than anyone.

It wasn't simply his childhood of being teased mercilessly by his sisters and being humiliated by them constantly, or being brushed off by his friends at the swim club because he was younger, or being left behind by them while they continued their lives and he trailed in their midst. It wasn't just being shoved into a private middle school by his parents in order to fit into their ideals, or being constantly compared to his older sisters' success, or the fact that he no longer saw his friends and didn't make any new ones, or how he gave up swimming and instead studied so hard he hated it and questioned why he was sat at his tiny desk with his even tinier pencils and pens and textbooks, reading his prep school teacher's impossible handwriting. It wasn't how in high school his friends were leaving him behind once more, how he couldn't simply tell Rei that he wanted to kiss him in every waking moment, or how his grades were going down the toilet and he could no longer avoid the disapproving looks his parents gave him and the way they kept saying “we need to talk” as Nagisa carefully danced around the subject.

Instead, all of these things coming together had destroyed him, pushed him into a corner. Being told he could no longer be on the swim team was the final push, the final splinter in his side that broke him down. He knew it was childish of him to run, but when had they ever listened before? As a child, as someone they looked down on as the youngest of the family, he had no means of getting them back, so to speak. Running away was all he could do to negotiate, to get them to listen, except when was he planning on the negotiation part? He couldn't speak to them, yet he wanted them to see his way. Why was that so hard? Did it matter how he did it so long as they paid attention, tried to see past a bright head that didn't want to be filled with nothing but studies, classroom dust and endless practice papers?

 _All work and no play makes Jack a dull and boring boy._ That was something his father had quoted, when his parents had sat him down that time in middle school and asked him why he was so unhappy. He knew, no matter how strict their decisions, that they only wanted what was best for him. It seemed they didn't even realise what they were doing to him, how he was being chewed up by this routine of studying and working and concentrating without a friend to laugh with or to talk to. His father felt that the idea of Nagisa having freedom was reasonable; his mother suggested he try a year of high school there first, to see if things got better. He already knew they wouldn't.

They told him he was abusing his freedom when they saw his grades. Nagisa didn't want to hear about how his eldest sister, Mariko, was running a successful business in Hokkaido, he didn't want to hear about how his sister Kana was already working in the local hospital, having gotten her medical degree, or how his other sister Sekai was at the top of her class at college. All he wanted to hear was, _we'll give you one more chance._ A crumb of that would have satisfied him, and he would have tried. But when he opened his mouth to try and argue and reason and beg, he found he couldn't say anything at all.

Rei-chan had gotten through to him, Mako-chan had reasoned with him, Haru-chan had given him a place to stay and had taken responsibility and had called Ama-chan-sensei. He had relied on them more than he'd ever wanted to in the beginning, and they cared about him more than he'd expected and he was glad, but having them talk to his parents wasn't changing anything. Unless they heard these words from him, everything would stay the same.

They had agreed to it, but what did that do for him? Simply screaming the words he thought he could never say to a substitute for his mother hadn't changed a thing, he knew that, but when he faced his parents again he felt horribly alone.

These thoughts rolled around his head, suffocating, taunting.

_I'm not the kind of son they want, they want someone willing to dedicate their life to learning, they want a successful son who will answer the phone when they call and will come home for dinner every Sunday and will be a grade A student and will stop at nothing to achieve greatness, not the likes of me. Because when are kids like me ever wanted? Kids like me avoid their parents, don't they? We lock ourselves away, too afraid to disappoint but too afraid to shout that it isn't fair. As they used to criticise in the Japanese newspapers, the education system destroyed us from the inside, and my parents don't realise that it doesn't get easier because they have never lived through overbearing parents and living in the shadows of siblings so much better than them. I hate it, I hate it, I'm whiny, and not wanted._

The build up of these thoughts, weighing down like his entire life has always been silently bearing down, sent him to the floor. None of the others were around, no one was here to see his face split into this ugly expression again, to see these tears well up in his eyes and to see his face scream, _if I'm swimming I'll disappoint them, but if I please them I'll disappoint you, so who do I depend on anymore to be happy? You can't be happy when you're letting the people you love down._

Why was it always him who ended up biting the dust? If he pleased both of them he'd be back where he started, alone, frustrated, swimming in the dark while searching for the light and ease that came with a healthy compromise. The people all around him had always compared him to a penguin, and Nagisa knows that penguins can't fly. Once they're buried in their own mistakes, from not speaking out or for not heeding to change, they can't fly out and they can't escape, and are instead trapped until someone rescues them.

_I can't do anything on my own unless I know that I'm wanted._

Haruka found him on the porch swing outside his home, crying, burying his head in his hands. There weren't questions asked. Haruka sat down beside him and allowed Nagisa to lean against him as he cried.

“Without you guys I'm not worth anything,” he found himself crying, the tears blurring his vision, burning his eyes. “I get thrown away, back and forth between pleasing my parents and pleasing you, and when my own friends leave I am pushed back into my parents and their expectations and I don't think I can do it anymore. Without you guys I can't even talk to my own parents. When you're gone I'll have nothing to say to them and we'll go back to how we've always been.”

These sour words, fuelled with the anger and bitterness he had been hiding beneath his sweet, bubbly surface since middle school kept pouring out hideously from his mouth, spilling over, poisoning the air around them, staining his clothes dark and reddening his cheeks. He hated that he had been broken down by this. He thought back to those days alone in elementary school, crying in Haru-chan's house, swimming alone, being thrown back into a lonely ocean again, only to flounder for years until high school crawled into his grasp.

“You can do these things, Nagisa,” Haruka tried. “You're better than you believe.”

Nagisa shook his head, rubbing his eyes. He gave Haruka a cheerful smile.

“I know that you think saying these words will make me believe them, Haru-chan. I know that tomorrow we can laugh and joke because I have more time to make things okay, and tomorrow I'll smile and be merry and will be full of energy. But in the end, that's still because of you all, isn't it?” Nagisa shook all over, but forced the same smile he always did, knuckles white. “That's okay, isn't it? I'll smile and joke while you are all here. And then when you leave, I'll give into the cycle and allow it to repeat. Because I can't stand up for myself, Haru-chan. I can't do anything by myself.”

For a few moments he expected Haruka to come out with something bittersweet and promising, like _you don't have to do things alone!_ or _you need to have more faith!_ And then he remembered he was speaking to Haruka, his Haru-chan who cared for him and looked out for him, but couldn't offer such false words. Instead, he was met with silence, and Nagisa nodded.

“This is how it's always been,” Nagisa muttered, closing his eyes. “It's inevitable.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of mixed feelings about this episode. When I wrote this I was angry and upset by the episode and how it dealt with Nagisa's story, while also being hopelessly in love with the way he cried and the way he grew angry at how he had tried to ignore the problem. My poor child. I feel like I would have liked to see Nagisa say these things to his parents rather than have the swim club do the talking for him, and the fact that he finally plucked up the courage to shout everything he was feeling, only to have everyone else talk to his parents when the time came, it just felt like they were pushing his feelings away again and that annoyed me because he was so close to actually developing more. Damn it.
> 
> Anyway, this was supposed to be something bittersweet and nagiharu but in the end it didn't really end up anything but bitter ahaha. When I read it through today there were some things that seemed weird and oddly paced and not all of it felt strung together but it was more like... I wanted to convey Nagisa's emotions, picturing that the frustration I had was in his heart too. So I left it as it was... sorry if it doesn't all make sense. :/ (also wow this got really long im sorry haha)


End file.
